Background
This is a software as a service business (SAAS) with big contracts.
Even though most of the terms they want to target have small search volume, it’s OK because they are very valuable keywords. They had potential but just weren't seeing the traffic yet - that's where we come in!
The SEO Audit
Whenever we take on a project with our managed SEO service, the first thing we do is audit the site.
We look at keywords rankings, traffic, links, anchor text, and more.
This site had no previous penalties. It did have some previous traffic, but it wasn’t growing.
There was no over-optimization, and overall they just didn’t have enough link juice! We wanted to increase their link equity, as well as continue making sure we created consistent content.
Keyword Research
Finding Quick Wins
We found 114 terms with volume between 10-40 a month, with an average CPC of $20. Clearly these are not large volume keywords because this is a very niche software, but like we mentioned earlier, this can be very lucrative.
The majority of these terms were on page 2-3. We knew from the beginning we probably wouldn’t see impressive traffic graphs for easy wins, but it would make them lots of money if we could rank them for these.
Looking At Competitors
The competitive gap analysis helps us find the keywords that your competitors are currently ranking for that you are not. These keywords are usually great ideas for creating new content and helping you differentiate from the pack.
We found 301 terms between 300 – 10,000 searches a month, all with CPC. There were lots of gems in there and we shared these ALL with the client.
SEO Strategy
This was a pretty sound fully managed SEO service strategy without too many variations.
Here’s what we did:
Month 1
- 1 Guest Post – exact match with easy win keywords
- 1 Guest Post – exact match with other easy win keywords
- 1 Medium Diversity Links – naked, brand, and partial match
- 1 Blog Content x 1000 words – Focused on keywords in the content gap
Month 2
- 1 Guest Post – exact match with easy wins
- 1 Guest Post – exact match product page 2 from easy wins
- 1 Medium Diversity Links – Branded, URL, partial match
- 1 Blog Content x 1000 words – keyword from content gap
Month 3
- 1 Guest Post – exact match
- 1 Guest Post – partial match product page 2
- 1 Medium Diversity Links – Branded, URL, partial match
- 1 Blog Content x 1000 words – keyword from content gap
SEO Results
We have only completed 2 months of links and they haven’t even taken full effect yet...
..but look at this huge spike in keyword rankings:
And the $$$:
Takeaway
If you have a good amount of content, but you’re not getting rankings, build high-quality, diverse links and you can start realizing the traffic.
Remember content + authority links is the key.
Month 4+ starts getting really exciting because we see the results from the linking, have more to target, and can push more to page 1!
This was an amazing campaign for us but not just because of the work that was done, but also how closely we were able to work with the client.
The client put trust in us to follow the process but also worked closely with our team to identify high targets to focus in on as the campaign progressed.
In addition, because of the larger spend level, our team was able to prepare an additional analysis of competitors, which gave the client insights that helped beyond just the search portion of this campaign and influenced business decisions.
Conclusion
As you can see, by following a strategic plan, you can get some pretty impressive results in a short period of time.
These results came thanks to our fully managed SEO service program.
We encourage everyone to be consistent in their SEO plan and stay on for at least 3 months to start seeing results.